BAGA, Nigeria (AP) — Fighting between Nigeria's military and Islamic extremists killed at least 185 people in a fishing community in the nation's far northeast, officials said Sunday, an attack that saw insurgents fire rocket-propelled grenades and soldiers spray machine-gun fire into neighborhoods filled with civilians.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sacrilege."

The Islamic insurgency in Nigeria grew out of a 2009 riot led by Boko Haram members in Maiduguri that ended in a military and police crackdown that killed some 700 people. The group's leader died in police custody in an apparent execution. From 2010 on, Islamic extremists have engaged in hit-and-run shootings and suicide bombings, attacks that have killed at least 1,548 people before Friday's attack, according to an AP count.

In January 2012, Boko Haram launched a coordinated attack in Kano, northern Nigeria's largest city, that killed at least 185 people as well. However, casualty numbers remain murky in Nigeria, where security and government officials often downplay figures.

I don't know if I agree with that, Backspace. I spent 2 years in Southern Africa in one of the poorest countries in the world, Lesotho. As the only white skinned person for maybe 40 miles in any direction (till the next US Peace Corps volunteer), I was treated with respect by a people that had lived through some tough times with apartheid white rule, and they still spent alot of time singing and dancing.

With the singing and dancing, and the history of the local elders meeting to solve problems, and the chiefs dividing and giving out land, is western capitalism and wealth necessarily evolved that much better?Health care would be perhaps the best argument for African countries being behind, but there is a wisdom in the way Africans live - to say "least evolved" may be too generalized.